It’s all about sex.
Like, you didn’t know that.
Not sexuality, not gender, but simple fucking.
You knew that too, didn’t you? You just don’t like to admit that it’s something so primitive ~ so without love, so without affection, so without … meaning.
Fucking, of course, is never that simple.
Why?
Because we, as humans, need to overlay everything with meaning. It’s what we do. So we pretend that sex is about love.
Well, women do anyway.
We can’t pretend sex is an intellectual construct created to justify something else ~ it’s all too basic and smelly for that ~ but we can make such a case for love, and all the myriad of complex offshoots love copulates with.
This diatribe then, is about the real differences between the sexes and what drives them, what SEX drives them. Forget Mars and Venus, start thinking Gaia and the penis.
So what’s this about Tiresias then. And who was she. If indeed, *she* was ever anyone at all … thanks to James Hunter for his background guff.
Tiresias was the son of Everes and the nymph Chariclo; she was a blind prophet, the most famous soothsayer of ancient Greece.
The most famous account of the origin of her blindness and prophetic talent is not that well known. Unless you’re a classic’s scholar – and they are a dying breed (but they’re also dying to tell you more).
When Tiresias was walking in the woods one day, he came upon two great serpents copulating; he struck them with his staff, and was thereupon transformed into a woman. Why? Perhaps the ancient Greeks had overlaid serpents with some deific grandeur. Whatever the reason, serpent whacking ~ especially when they were screwing ~ became a no-no.
Seven years later, she passed by the same place and came upon the same two serpents at it again; she struck them again with the staff and was turned back into a man. Maybe revisiting the site was a clever ploy but more likely Tiresias just never learned from her mistakes (do we ever?)
Some time later, Zeus and Hera were arguing over who had more pleasure in sex, the man or the woman: Zeus said it was the woman, while Hera claimed men got more pleasure from the act. To settle the argument, they consulted Tiresias, since he had experienced life ~ and presumably sex ~ from both sides of the divide, and Tiresias sided with Zeus. Girls, she said, didn’t only want to have fun, they had it longer, stronger and better than the chaps did. In her anger, Hera struck Tiresias blind. Since Zeus could not undo the act of another deity, he gave Tiresias the gift of prophecy in compensation. The message: don’t piss a woman off, even when she’s on your side.
Another account says that Tiresias accidentally saw Athena naked, and she covered his eyes with her hands, thus rendering him blind. When Tiresias’ mother Chariclo asked Athena to restore her son’s sight, the goddess could not undo her own action but gave him the gift of prophecy as compensation. This sounds like Zeus and Hera’s spin doctors shifting the blame, don’t you think? We did, after all, win the war in Iraq, didn’t we? We didn’t actually have sexual relations with that woman, did we?
There are many tales about individual prophecies of Tiresias: he predicted the manner of Narcissus’ death; he tried to warn Oedipus of the rashness of that king’s inquiries about his parents; he predicted that the sacrifice of Menoeceus, son of Creon, would permit the forces of Eteocles to repulse the army of the Seven Against Thebes. Tiresias eventually died from drinking from the spring Tilphussa, but even after death his shade was able to offer valuable prophecy to the hero Odysseus. Maybe Hilary sound have invoked him before spending all that money.
And what of Gaia?
Gaia is an ecological hypothesis that proposes that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) are coupled together to form a complex interacting system.
This system is proposed to act in a homeostatic fashion that preserves climatic and biogeochemical conditions on Earth that are suitable for living organisms. Named after the Greek Titan of the earth, the hypothesis is frequently described as viewing the Earth as a single organism. Those Greeks, they were onto something, weren’t they?
Women, of course, are Gaian because they see sex in a wholistic way and from a global perspective. Women are about quality while men are about quantity.
The penis (plural penises, penes) is the external sexual organ of certain biologically male organisms. The human biological male organism complies with this set of rules. The penis has no brain of its own but, instead, controls the brain of the human biological organism. The opposite is the case with the human female where the brain controls the libido and not the other way around.
The word ‘penis’ was taken from Latin and originally meant ‘tail.’ Some derive that from Indo-European *pesnis, and the Greek word πεος = ‘penis’ from Indo-European *pesos. Prior to the adoption of the Latin word in English the penis was referred to as a ‘yard’.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites an example of the word yard used in this sense from 1379, and notes that in his Physical Dictionary of 1684, Steven Blankaart defined the word penis as ‘the Yard, made up of two nervous Bodies, the Channel, Nut, Skin, and Fore-skin, etc.’
Are you surprised?
I’m not.
No male I’ve ever met could tell six inches from a yard ~ except maybe John Holmes who chose to triangulate himself by having an extra foot (not that I ever met John Holmes, but I have seen documentary, if flaccid, proof of this claim).
Henry Makow PhD, at age 12, in 1961 saw the movie Spartacus. He recalls ‘In one scene the camera focuses on Kirk Douglas’ face as Jean Simmons sheds her gown. His face is full of wonderment and awe, lighted by the mystical glow seeming to emanate from her naked body.’
It was actually the fire, but I’ll not spoil a romantic justification by introducing the cold, hard truth: the heat wasn’t being generated by the beautiful Jean but by the lighting effects department.
Makow continues: ‘our pagan modern culture programmes us (males) to worship sex in the form of the fertile young female. Sex is considered the most pleasurable and profound experience life has to offer and possession of the nubile female the greatest gift. Henceforth I judged females primarily on the basis of sex appeal; all others were invisible. I also equated sexual desire with love, and love with religion. In essence, I became dysfunctional, unable to relate to real women.’
Paul Simon’s ‘Kathy’s Song’ (1965) became the anthem for men of Makow’s generation:
So you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.
He elaborates thus: ‘we were taught to seek fulfilment in romance. Uprooted from our true historical and spiritual context, we were told life is meaningless: find it in sex.’
Francis Parker Yockey wrote in 1948: ‘An erotomania is abroad through our civilization. It is the identification of ‘happiness’ with sexual love, holding it up as the great value, before which all honour, duty, patriotism, consecration of Life to a higher aim, must give way.’ (Imperium, 297)
This message has not changed and it is pervasive. The pagan goddess is used to sell everything from cell phones to insurance. In one commercial, she says, “even I get constipation” as if she were supernatural.
As if this weren’t enough, lately she has become an Amazon warrior anxious to avenge centuries of imagined oppression. As result, she is either frostily unapproachable or a demanding pleasure-seeking slut.
Makow suggests ‘Many men have turned to pornography, which has become a multi billion-dollar industry and national pastime. ‘ I would suggest they didn’t turn to pornography but that it was never off their radar. All they did was find how to access it.
In Plato’s Republic , Socrates says that when he finally lost his sex drive in old age, he felt as if he had been ‘released from the jaws of a wild beast.’ Shouldn’t argue with Socrates, after all, he gave us the Theban plays and hence the other Greek switch-hitter Tiresias, she of earlier mention, she who should know.
But back to Henry who doesn’t think sex is intended to be a lifelong obsession. In his opinion it is part of the ‘courtship and procreation’ phase. We are meant, in the word according to Henry Makow Ph.D. ‘to marry young, have children and outgrow sex to some extent. We are, indeed, ‘intended to focus our energy on more compelling things.‘
Makow speaks for many on the Christian right when he says ‘men and women are demeaned when they seek sex merely as physical release.’
And, of course he has certainty on his side
Are you surprised to read that Makow and his buddies say ‘let’s humanize sex by insisting that it belongs in a loving long-term male-led relationship. The sex act is the sacred ritual of creation. The man plants his seed, which contains his essence, his genetic code. The woman receives and nourishes this seed into a creature capable of knowing God. Let’s look for compatible mates, he says, rather than sex partners. This would avoid a lot of hardship, rejection and wasted time. Women would instantly become more approachable and available.’
And of course, that’s what you all want, don’t you, guys?
How … simple.
And how simply made up, the justification of all justifications, the mother … sorry, father of all arguments).
The American writer Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) wrote in his Autobiography (1962): I learned to work fourteen hours a day at study and creative effort because it was only by being thus occupied that the craving for woman could be kept out of my soul. I recited the Wisdom of Solomon: ‘he that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.’
According to Sinclair, and many religions, the energy goes right to the spiritual bottom line: Imagine anyone wanting a lot of money or houses and servants or fine raiment if he knew how to be happy as I did! Imagine anyone becoming drunk on whiskey if he might become drunk on poetry and music, sunsets and valleys full of clover!’
But if you don’t care for valleys full of clover (and I don’t know many men who do) then I guess you’re left with the alternative.
Makow then engages in the ultimate conspiracy theory: describing sex as an end in itself as ‘another modern hoax.’ He goes on to say that sexual pleasure is nature’s way of making sure we propagate’ and that’s a pretty irrefutable argument but then, invoking his vast experience in such matters he says ‘sex is highly overrated. The same applies to the female body, which has become stale from overexposure. ‘
We seriously lost contact with each other at this point. No lifetime of experience could ever make the female body anything other than a thing of exquisite beauty ~ and the male body too, if that’s what flicks your switch.
So what exactly are Makow and his right wing mates saying? They believe that the male sex drive must be controlled or at least sublimated ~ but then what religion throughout history didn’t try to control its adherents first and foremost by addressing the sexual pleasure centre, either by worshiping it or denying it. Control the pleasure centre and you control the man (and indirectly, the woman).
And if you have some sympathy for Makow, here’s whatelse he has to say: ‘the thing to remember is that the world is run by a Luciferian cult based in London which controls brainwashing (media and education.) These Illuminati bankers and bluebloods use sex to neuter, distract and degrade both men and women. Their plan is to restore the feudal model in which we are serfs at best. They are undermining resistance by undermining our sources of cohesion and strength: nations, races, religions and families. Slavery begins with the mind. We can resist by not being controlled by sex.’
Still with him, chaps, in wanting to sublimate and deny your desire the fuck the next thing that moves? Still looking for the spiritual in the physical?
There is an alternative view however, as expressed in somewhat less eloquent (and deceptive) terms, by Dick from Dick’s Top Ten Reasons MenAreBetterThanWomen.com.
The aptly named ‘Dick’ gives his reasons, and something approximating an explanation:
10. Men do not have Tourette Syndrome
9. Men are not sponges
8. Women are racists
7. Men live less than women
6. Men write illegibly
5. Jesus was a man
4. Men wear watches
3. Boys destroy things
2. Marriage is stupid
1. Men have penises
When it comes to being a man, being quick at identifying problems is tantamount to fixing them. Having a penis — in other words looking like a man and having man parts — is a man’s way of telling other men, ‘Hey. Look at me. I’m a man. I won’t fuck up whatever it is that you’re trying to do. If you need some help, maybe ask me and I’ll see if I can lend a man-hand. It’s the least I could do to be fucking courteous.’
Even today, many females don’t understand what makes men ‘tick’ sexually.
It’s difficult for a female to understand just how powerful the average man’s sex drive is.
Although males vary a lot on how keen on sex they are, they do tend to be much more ‘driven’ sexually than women are. (This applies to gay men as well as to straight guys.)
In early 2005, one of Britain’s top sex experts told the media that in general, men are on a ‘five day cycle’ where sex is concerned ie wanting it every five days – whereas women are more likely to be on a ‘10 day cycle’. There is some truth in this. But please be aware that plenty of males – particularly young and virile ones – would really like to have sex every day – and maybe much more often than that, if their bodies would ‘allow’ it!
Indeed, in the era of anti-impotence drugs we have actually seen middle-aged men who had been using these medicines to satisfy three ladies in a single afternoon. While this is pretty unwise behaviour, it does offer an insight into male sexuality …
One of the reasons why the human race has survived for hundreds of thousands of years is the fact that nature has ‘programmed’ men to be mad- keen on penetrating women – and getting sperm into them.
That may not sound very nice, but it’s the truth. The primary sexual objective of a human male is to get his penis inside a woman – and to discharge his sperm into her.
And even though many guys succeed in being faithful to their partners, the scientific truth is that males are really ‘programmed’ to inseminate as many attractive females as possible.
So the fact of the matter is that the human race has survived in the main because primitive men went round fertilising a lot of women – thus ensuring the continuance of the species.
But let’s bring it up to date. What about your man today?
Well, it should be the case that recent centuries of civilisation have had an effect on him – so that he does not try to impregnate every nice-looking woman he meets.
Nonetheless, the following are fairly safe assumptions: your man is very keen on sex and he thinks about it a lot – much more often than you do! However romantic and gentle he may be, deep down one of his major objectives in life is to get his penis inside you.
And once it’s in there, he has a deep, driving ‘biological imperative’ to reach a climax – and pump his sperm into you. So ingrained is this instinct to impregnate a woman that many men appear keen to accept any available female orifice – even if it’s not the vagina. That’s why a very high proportion of men desire oral sex and a substantial minority (and it does still appear to be a minority) are keen on anal sex.
So, the average male is more interested in sex than the average female and is much more likely to: feel very strong urges to have intercourse, take sexual risks, regardless of the consequences, be unfaithful and to try ‘commercial’ (ie paid for ) sex.
The slightest thing can set a man off – for instance: the sight of a woman’s cleavage, a well-shaped bottom, a good pair of legs and even a whiff of perfume.
So, female readers, never underestimate the power of a man’s sexual response.
You have been warned!‘
And that’s The Gospel According to Dick …
But the Gaia story is different.
It would seem from Googling that the female sex drive is only ever discussed in relation to what it’s not. The first 100 entries when Googling ‘female sex drive’ almost all relate to improving or enhancing the female sex drive or addressing ‘dysfunction’.
For example:
~ to boost female sex drive
~ Female Sexual Enhancement Patch
~ Increase Female Sex Drive
~ Increase your Sex Drive
~ Female Libido Pills
~ Increase female sex drive
~ A Woman’s Guide to Reviving Sex Drive
~ Can Medicine Boost Female Sex Drive?
~ Female Sex Problems
~ Sexual Dysfunction, female sexual disorders, low libido
~ Drug boosts sex drive, company says
~ Increase Female Sex Drive and Enhance Female Orgasms.
Dysfunction in relation to what?
Is it some perceived imbalance with the male sex drive? And if so, how is this a problem if it’s ‘biological programming’ as Dick claims it is with men?
Or is it a more pervasive sexism at work here?
George Bernard Shaw, one of the truly great proponents of ‘mannism’, asks in ‘Pygmalion’: why can’t a woman be more like a man? Well George, it’s because we can’t see the point. We couldn’t at the turn of the 20th century and now, a hundred years later, we still can’t. No more than you could see the point of being more like a woman.
We do other things ~ and we have sex when the time is right which, while it might not be every seven seconds, it is right for us. And the fact that we don’t want to do it with everyone but only the guys who present as the best breeding options isn’t a bad thing, it’s just how it is for us.
The one given we can take from this is: we have a mismatch problem. Even though sex therapists would say that each is ‘normal’, the pressure, even in therapy, is most commonly on the person with the lower sex drive to pick up the pace. And this, in most cases, is the woman.
In a recent survey in the United States, 43 percent of women and 31 percent of men identified themselves as having one or more sexual problems.
Among women, 33 percent complained of low sexual desire, 24 percent reported inability to come to orgasm, and 14 percent stated they experience pain during sex.
For men, the most frequently reported problem was premature ejaculation, accounting for 28 percent of complaints, while 15 percent rated themselves as lacking interest in sex, 10 percent said they had problems attaining or maintaining an erection, and 3 percent had physical pain during intercourse.
Sandra Pertot, an Australian clinical psychologist and sex therapist, suggests that if one in three women believes she is not as interested in sex as she should be, and one in four men doesn’t last as long as he thinks he should last, then maybe many in this self-selected group aren’t dysfunctional at all but are either variations on the norm or comparing themselves unrealistically with an ideal.
I would suggest that the latter is the case.
Pertot goes on to say that many women who believe they are not experiencing arousal and orgasm have been influenced by the stereotype of hot and powerful sexual response portrayed in the media and promoted by the myth that if you aren’t sure whether you’ve had an orgasm, you haven’t! Some women who believe they are unable to reach orgasm are surprised to learn that that nice warm feeling or that sigh of relaxation is an orgasm, even if it is perhaps a 2 on a 10-point scale.
Sexual desire and ejaculatory control are more subjectively determined and evaluated.
What is sexual desire?
Is it physical passion, or is it an emotional desire for intimacy? Can it be different things at different times? Is it possible to want sex but prefer to avoid it, and if so, why? What is a ‘normal’ level of sexual interest?
Interestingly, this survey did not include questions about desiring sex with great frequency. Does that mean that you can’t want sex too much, but you can want it too little?
How quick is too quick for ejaculation? Which partner is worried about it? Why? Is the problem that the woman finds it difficult to come to orgasm with penile thrusting despite the man controlling ejaculation for a reasonable time?
Additionally, for those people who rated themselves as not having problems, how did they decide this? Were all of them behaving close to the cultural norm, or were some of them confident enough to be happy to be different?
These questions need to be carefully considered before anyone, including sex therapists and researchers, can begin to understand the extent of individual variation in sexuality. Until these issues are thoroughly explored and discussed in sex manuals, magazine articles, and self-help books, people in the community will continue to rate themselves as having sexual problems even when there’s a good chance that they’re perfectly normal.
Look around at your friends, family, and colleagues. Each person has a unique set of behaviours, thoughts, and feelings that make up the sum of whom they are. This set of characteristics forms the personality of the individual and is consistently present for that person. Some characteristics may dominate or be present in all interactions, while others may reveal themselves only in specific situations.
In general, personality is considered to be stable over a person’s lifetime, but not all characteristics are fixed or inflexible, and people can and do adapt according to circumstances and life experiences.
At the present time, there is a tendency to use sexual personality characteristics in a critical way. For example, for ‘conservative’ read ‘inhibited’; for ‘shy’ read ‘hung up’; and so on.
However, if we acknowledge that each person has a unique personality and that what one person likes and admires in a friend, another may find annoying, then we can assume that the situation is similar with sexual personalities.
In other words, what one person finds attractive, endearing, or exciting in someone else’s sexual personality may be a complete turnoff for a different person.
Who is in a position to make a judgment as to which personality is the most functional? In the end, this judgment tends to become relevant only when an individual becomes involved in a sexual interaction. Of course, this brings into play the importance of the relationship between the two: A relationship characterized by mutual generosity, kindness, and gentleness is more likely to be able to resolve or accommodate differences than is one that is harsh, critical, and rigid.
So Jane is from Gaia, and it’s OK there.
And men follow their penises, like Dick said.
And that’s OK too.
When the two get it together it can be fun ~ and should be fun (whether we overlay it with something else or not).
Acceptance is the key ~ and spare a thought for those of us for whom the overarching heteronormative paradigm just doesn’t work, the GG girls and the BB boys.
Non-standard non-heteronormacy is just cool too.
Ask Tiresias, she’ll tell you ~ and she should know!
Revised last on 18 February, 2009
dykiegirl 